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“A year ago, almost in this same place where I found his beer can, I found a possum that he had shot dead and left lying, in celebration of his manhood. He is the true American pioneer, perfectly at rest in his assumption that he is the first and the last whose inheritance and fate this place will ever be. Going forth, as he may think, to sow, he only broadcasts his effects.”

– Wendell Berry in The Art of the Commonplace | A Native Hill p.20

“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

― E.B. White

“Grow up with me.
Let’s run in fields and fear the dark together.
Fall off swings, and burn special things, and both play outside in bad weather. Let’s eat badly.
Let’s watch adults drink wine and laugh at their idiocy. Let’s sit in the back of the car,
making eye contact with strangers driving past,
making them uncomfortable.
Not caring.
Not swearing.
Don’t fuck. Let’s both reclaim our superpowers; the ones we all have and lose with our milk teeth. The ability not to fear social awkwardness.
To panic when locked in the cellar;
still sure there’s something down there.
And while picking from pillows each feather, let’s both stay away from the edge of the bed,
forcing us closer together.
Let’s sit in public, with ice cream all over both our faces;
sticking our tongues out at passers by.
Let’s cry.
Let’s swim. Let’s everything.
Let’s not find it funny lest someone falls over.
Classical music is boring.
Poetry baffles us both;
there’s nothing that’s said is what’s meant. Plays are long, tiresom, sullend, and filled;
with hours that could be spent rolling down hills,
and grazing our knees on cement.
Let’s hear stories and both lose our inocence.
Learn about parents and forgiveness,
death and morality,
kindness and art,
thus losing both of our innocent hearts,
but at least we won’t do it apart.
Grow up with me.”

– Keaton Henson, Grow Up with Me

Excerpts from William P. Young’s “The Shack”

I recently finished The Shack by William P. Young. It was evidently controversial when it first came out, but when don’t USAmerican Christians jump at the chance to be offended by something? That, though, is another story, for another time.
Overall, I enjoyed The Shack and here are some of my favourite lines:

In a world of talkers, Mack was a thinker and a doer.
– p. 9

(W)hen he does talk, it isn’t that they stop liking him – rather, they are not quite so satisfied with themselves.
– p.9

I suppose that since most of our hurts come through relationships so will our healing.
– p.11

(G)race rarely makes sense for those looking in from the outside.
– p.11

Something in the heart of most humans beings simply cannot abide pain inflicted on the innocent, especially children. Even broken men serving in the worst correctional facilities will often first take out their own rage on those who have caused suffering to children.
– p.59

Relationships are never about power, and one way to avoid the will to power is to choose to limit oneself – to serve. Humans often do this – in touching the infirm and sick, in serving the ones whose minds have left to wander, in relationship to the poor, in loving the very old and the very young, or even in caring for the other who has assumed a position of power over them.
– p.106

When you choose independence over relationship, you become a danger to each other. Others become objects to be manipulated or managed for your own happiness. Authority, as you think of it, is merely the excuse the strong use to make others conform to what they want.
– p.123

(Religion, politics, and economics) are tools that many use to prop up their illusions of security and control. People are afraid of uncertainty, afraid of the future. These institutions, these structures and ideologies, are all a vain effort to create some sense of certainty and security where there isn’t any. It’s all false! Systems cannot provide you security, only (God) can!
– p.179

Rules cannot bring freedom; they only have the power to accuse.
– p.203

Forgiveness is first for you, the forgiver.
– p.225

“In art, you don’t get to learn something- you get to feel something. That’s why we listen to music. We don’t listen to music to learn that there are people in the world that don’t know who their daddy is. We already know that. But when Freddy Cole sings ‘I Wonder Who My Daddy Is’, you get to feel it. You get to feel what he feels.”

 – S**t My Photography Professor Says

Excerpts from “Reborn on the Fourth of July”

by Logan Mehl-Laituri

Logan Mehl-Laituri was a solider in the USA military. Along his journey into a deeper relationship with Christ, he became convicted that he couldn’t love his enemies while killing them. He applied for status as a conscientious objector, not to seek discharge but to return to Iraq with his unit, unarmed. He was denied this and discharged. Logan Mehl-Laituri has returned to Iraq as part of a Christian Peacemaker Team and is a founding member of The Centurions Guild.

I just thought a little bit about the author would provide a foundation for his quotes.

“Most (soldiers), if not all, … are forever altered by the performance of (their military) duties, no matter (the) legality or justifiability. The door through which you go in taking a life doesn’t remain open behind you; the threshold cannot be uncrossed. It alters your very consciousness; the truths you learn about yourself can never be unlearned.”

“When Jesus told his followers to love their enemies, I realized, he certainly did not intend for that love to be expressed at the business end of an artillery shell.”

“To love is not always the most expedient action – it might not even be the most rational – but Christians are not called to efficiency or rationality.”

“It is our duty as Christians to question war. The church’s task at the least, is to critically consider whether or not centuries-old criteria for just war have been met, like there being a just cause and right intent, a clear declaration of war, noncombatant immunity, and so on. Christians are not free to blindly follow orders; instead, we ultimately obey God rather than men.”

“I feared most a life of complacency, a life that denied my past and ignored my transgressions, a life that refused to acknowledge the presence and urgency of evil.”

“My favorite class in high school was an introduction to psychology, led by a white-haired thread of a man whom I admired. He taught us that love and hate are actually not opposites but emotionally related. Hate, he would tell us, is really just frustrated love. The opposite of love is indifference.”

Albert Einstein believed ‘peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding’ [written in his Notes of Pacifism]”

“Because white congregations in America have so often intellectualized faith and individualized our relationship with God, people who are hungry for community and drawn to justice movements are usually white. So we find ourselves trying to learn how to be the people of God with other white folks a lot of the time. The trouble with this isn’t just that we end up reproducing communities marked by racial division (though this is something that troubles us deeply). We also continue to suffer the deficiencies of white theology.”

– Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove in Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers

Excerpts from ‘Becoming the Answers to Our Prayers’ III

by Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

“The moment we are no longer tempted by the “pots of meat” the empire offers, we should be concerned—for if we can’t feel the temptation, we have probably given in to it.”

“Living in community allows us to know people well enough to see the work they have to do to meet their basic needs. Loving in community often looks like choosing to do someone’s dirty work for them.”

“Many people look at the empty cathedrals in Europe and wonder if our megachurches will become museums in the next generation.”

“(W)e should pray that we would become the sort of people who are safe for God to trust with miracles. We must become people who will not exploit or market or pervert the power of the Spirit. We must become people who get out of the way of God.”

“(W)e need to pray like everything depends on God and live like God has no other plan but the church.”

“Throughout the history of the church, Christians have recognized that we cannot pray “Our father” together on Sunday and deny bread to our brothers and sisters on Monday. But we live in difficult days. The hungry are not just hungry. Often they are also our enemies. Drug addiction and mental illness make many who are hungry hard to deal with. They threaten us. Others have been hungry for so long that they are angry, even at those of us who want to help. We worry about how to protect ourselves from them while at the same time feeling guilty for our complicity in their poverty. So we give to charities. And charities become the brokers for our compassion toward the poor. The problem with this is that we never get to know the poor. Though we have been made children of God together with them in Jesus Christ, we never sit down to eat with our hungry brothers and sisters. We never hear their stories. We never learn to see the world through their eyes”

– Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove in Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers